Site visit: Liverpool University Central Teaching Laboratory
Place took a walk around the site of the latest new academic building for Liverpool University with main contractor Wates Construction to see how progress was going.
See photo gallery below
The three-storey 83,562 sq ft building, costing £13m, will be located next to an undergraduate lecture theatre amidst the university's science teaching campus. The established university area already enjoys mature landscaped green spaces and trees and the building will be well hidden from the road.
Liverpool University's Central Teaching Lab (CTL) will house geography on one floor and chemistry on another with a third taken up with extensive mechanical and engineering equipment designed by Arup and built offsite in modules by Emcor, who partnered with Wates on the tender. The university says the sharing of analytical equipment and teaching resources will allow for more specialist analysis and experiments which are currently beyond the individual departments' facilities.
The lab equipment and M&E in the building is so advanced that Wates' bespoke handover team will spend five weeks training university staff on how to use their new space in the commissioning period at the end of the 64-week build contract.
The project at a glance:
- Work started May 2010
- Completion due September 2011
- Located off Oxford Street, the continuation of Mount Pleasant opposite Abercromby Square
- £13m project, of which £5m is mechanical and electrical
- Tight site between existing academic buildings in central campus area
- Situated on the old green between chemistry department and lecture theatre
- Mixture of teaching areas and labs
- 69 fume cupboards in the labs
- Externally cladded with limestone, cor-ten weathering steel and aluminium
- Green wall will enhance landscaping and eco-performance
- Existing heating mains pipe had to be diverted before construction
- Off site construction widely employed
- Whole top floor of mechanical and engineering
- Atrium in centre of building
- Steel frame construction with 14m span pre-cast units
- Wates and Emcor submitted a joint tender. Emcor's mechanical and engineering modules will be built off site from 3D models
- Finished bulkheads form part of module fabrication
Delivery team:
- Architect – ADP
- M&E – Arup and Emcor
- Structural engineer – White Young Green
- Quantity surveyor – Gleeds
- Groundworks – GRKC
- Steel frame – TAAG
- Pre-cast – Creagh
- External cladding and roofing – Torclad
- Curtain walling – Fortress
- Metal sections – SB Partition
- Block work – Keith Walton's
- Scaffold – Cheshire Scaffolding
- Lifts – Arona
- Cladding & roofing – Torclad
Click image to launch gallery
- The central atrium
- The CTL will be at the heart of the campus
- Metropolitan Cathedral viewed from an upper floor
- The entire third floor will be taken up with plant equipment
- The entrance tower takes shape
- The CTL will connect with an existing university building next door at the entrance
